


this little home that i'm living in

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution
Genre: Gen, Gender Issues, Human Experimentation, I have never given a fuck about canon ever and I didn't start with this, Trans Female Character, Trans Laura, however, this is probably CLOSEST to Evo canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 17:25:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15801189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: X-23 is one of thirteen…brothers, for lack of a better word.  The lab staff call them brothers, a little tongue-in-cheek, and X-23 learns to hate the word, learns the taste of being called brother like the taste of blood, learns it asthingandcopyandweapon.





	this little home that i'm living in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingsweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingsweet/gifts).



> The miraculous [DarlingSweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingsweet/pseuds/darlingsweet) wanted to do a podfic of [this,](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/post/173107166799/im-in-love-with-your-tags-about-logan-and) so I'm going to put it up here so it's easier to hunt down! As ever, I'm sorry for my pathological need to throw a bunch of random canons into a blender, but not, like, THAT sorry, because comic canon is basically that anyway. The title is from Cha-Ching by Imagine Dragons!

X-23 is one of thirteen…brothers, for lack of a better word.  The lab staff call them brothers, a little tongue-in-cheek, and X-23 learns to hate the word, learns the taste of being called  _brother_  like the taste of blood, learns it as  _thing_ and  _copy_  and  _weapon_.  All of them do, but X-23 hates it the most.  

X-23′s brothers die one at a time–some of natural causes.  There were ten of them who never made it out of the  _ex vitro_  tanks, and X-14 dies at a year, X-11 at nineteen months, X-19 at three years, X-17 at five.  X-13 falls during training and the three broken ribs ‘heal’ straight into lung tissue, and the doctors usher the rest of them away.  X-13 never comes back from the medical bay, and neither do X-15, X-12, or X-22–broken leg, crushed hand, and cracked skull, in order.  Healed to death.

When X-23 comes looking for X-22, there’s a doctor sitting alone in an office with her hands clutched so tight the knuckles are bleached.  X-23 has always been a wanderer, more than the other brothers, and given to getting into trouble, often punished and all the more furious for it.

The doctor looks up when the door opens and scrubs the back of one hand over her face.

“Where’s X-22,” X-23 says flatly, and the doctor comes over to crouch down, on eye level.  X-23 is short.  They’re all short.

“I’m really sorry,” the doctor says, and she sounds sincere, her eyes red and her scent washed with something X-23 doesn’t recognize.  “He–he died,  _Veintitres_.  We did everything we could to save him.”

If it was any other doctor, X-23 would snarl and storm off, retreat to the others.  They’re never reprimanded for their tempers, only for disobedience.

This doctor, though.  This is the nicest doctor.  She never wears anything that makes them sneeze, and she brings chocolates when they have to get blood drawn, and she never told a soul when X-23 carefully removed one of her earrings, a plain silver hoop on X-23′s palm.  X-23 gave it back, but–

“Pretty,” X-23 says dully, reaching out to touch one of the hoops.  “He liked them too.”

The doctor’s eyes spill over and that smell pours off her skin as she carefully–very carefully, there are limits even for the nicest doctor–wraps one arm around X-23.

“Come on.  Let’s take you back to your brothers.”

There are five of them who make it to ten years old–X-16, X-18, X-20, X-21, and X-23.

There is one of them who makes it to ten years and one day.

X-23 doesn’t have any brothers anymore, just heavy bones and  _anger_.  The word  _brother_  is less dirty now that they’re all gone.

“What do we do with him?” X-23 hears a lab tech ask nervously as the newly silvered claws rip through another bed frame.  X-23 has destroyed two so far.  They’re an effort–metal frames intended to survive their rough treatment–but the claws are stronger.

X-23 hears  _him_  and thinks  _hate_ and decides then and there that she will be something else.

She destroys the fifth bed frame–she’ll sleep on the ground before she takes one of her brothers’ beds, and they never kept track of whose was whose, same scents, same bodies, same everything–and she stands there and looks at her new claws.  They’re brighter silver than the nicest doctor’s earrings, but bloody.

The nicest doctor disappeared last year, after X-22 died.

She sheathes her claws and storms out of the room and past the lab tech without a word.  She is a thing and a weapon and the last X clone and she will keep the secret that she is not  _him_  until they kill her, too.

X-23 is fourteen and terrifying when she hears that they’re thinking about doing a new set of clones.

She burns down the lab three days later and leaves with nothing but her tactical uniform.  She steals a hat when she realizes that her buzzed hair is drawing attention, and breaks into a library to google _Wolverine_  based on a slip from a doctor, and starts walking north east.  

Her hair grows fast.  It reaches chin length and keeps going, scruffy and wild, and she takes off her hat one day and shakes it out in a house she broke into, and her face starts to ache.  X-23 puts both hands up to her cheeks and tracks out the smile in surprise, and gives her head another shake, and her hair, freshly cleaned with someone else’s drug store shampoo, tickles her shoulders and her cheeks like the glint of light on silver earrings.

She stops wearing the hat the first day someone sees her hair and calls her  _miss_  with the kind of bow you sweep to little kids.  She forgets to snarl at them.

X-23 is halfway through walking from Mexico to New York when she gets asked what her name is, where her parents are.

“I don’t have any parents,” she tells the man in the uniform, squinting suspiciously at him.  He’s crouched down, well outside arm’s length, but she’s thinking about whether she can put a claw through his hand before he can grab her anyway.

“Okay,” he says calmly.  “What’s your name, honey?”

Weapons don’t have names.

She runs before he can stop her.

When she reaches New York, and Westchester, she has a good old try at taking Weapon X’s head off.

It doesn’t work.

So when she’s done screaming wordless rage into his chest, and Weapon X is done deducing how she got there, they sit side-by-side on the ground and X-23 tries to imitate the way he clasps his arms loosely around his knees.  It feels natural, supports the weight of the adamantium in her arms without effort, and she scowls at him when he notices.

“So, kid,” he says after a few minutes.  “You said there were twenty-three of you, right?”

She nods stiffly.  “All the rest of them are dead.  They were going to make more brothers, but I stopped them.”

“Good,” Weapon X says grimly.  “If I’d known, kid, I’d have done something for you and your brothers.  You did good.”

“Do you have brothers, Weapon X?”

“No idea,” he says with a shrug.  “Don’t remember much before the experiments.  You call me Weapon X again,” he goes on in the same equal tone, “I’m gonna leave you out here.  My name’s Logan, kid.  You got a name yet, or haven’t you got that far?”

“They didn’t give us names.”

“Weapons don’t get names,” Weapon X choruses with her, and he sighs.  “Well, you gotta have a name, I’m not callin’ you Twenty-three.”

“Sometimes they called me _Veintitres_.”

“That’s just ‘twenty-three’ in Spanish, kid, nice try.  Uh.”  He scrubs both hands back through his hair and laces them behind his neck.  “I’m shit at this.  Stole my name off a movie poster.  You seen any you liked?”

X-23 thinks about it.  She’s seen movie posters.  Most of the names are either desperately boring, like  _Tom_ , or unfamiliar and unpronounceable, like  _Charlize,_ and she doesn’t really know what she’s supposed to look for.

She remembers a poster of a woman with earrings, and the old black and white ink didn’t make them glitter any less.  She didn’t see the woman’s name, but she remembers the title.

“Laura,” she says.

Weapon X blinks at her for a moment.  “Nice name,” he says at last.  “Don’t think I asked, kid. You a boy or a girl?”

“I’m a clone.”

He actually grins at that.  “Yeah, I got that.  But, uh, you like  _he_  or  _she_?”

X-23 stares at him and thinks.  She’s kept this secret, this sole scrap of a person under all the metal, for four years, give or take a few months.  But Weapon X gave up his name to her without even hesitating, didn’t lay a hand on her except for a few bruises that are already healing, isn’t even fidgeting while she studies him, just letting her look her fill.

“She,” X-23 says firmly.  

“Okay,” Weapon X says, and unfolds himself with a sigh.  He’s short, she notices.  He offers her a hand and catches her wrist and pulls her to her feet, then drops a hand firmly on her shoulder and steers her out of the woods.  “Let’s go get some lunch, Laura.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me about the X-Men, I am [on Tumblr!](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/)


End file.
